


Find your fulcrum, set your feet, and pitch your tent.

by RainofLittleFishes



Category: Homestuck
Genre: How do you determine personhood?, How do you measure intelligence?, Humor, Past Child Death, Petstuck, Questions about the ethics of animal captivity, Troll babies, Veterinary Clinic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-15
Updated: 2014-11-15
Packaged: 2018-02-25 12:14:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2621315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainofLittleFishes/pseuds/RainofLittleFishes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jade Harley muses on the differences between wild, domesticated, and feral, the ethics of animal captivity, and the lines between personhood and not. She also cuddles some really cute babies, heckles her brother, and re-balances her budget. This is not a revolution fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Find your fulcrum, set your feet, and pitch your tent.

Karkat is back.

You’re sad and maybe a little thrilled in a guilty way, but not surprised. It’s the fifth time. You promised to stay late to get him settled.

Sherry, his most recent owner, and once a classmate of yours, is crying as she signs the surrender forms. Karkat is sitting primly at her feet, leash falling in a graceful swoop, utterly still with just the faintest frown on his face, the default one that covers mild frustration, general thinking, and mild humor. His tail is twitching with the slow steady betrayal that he is more interested in the proceedings than his face reveals.

Of course, he’s an animal, so you shouldn’t attribute the same thoughts and emotions to him as a human expression would dictate, but science can go suck it. It’s taken this long for scientists to admit that animals aren’t organic machines and have emotions, it’ll take a lot longer to get any further on the ethics and morality of keeping cetaceans, elephants, large primates, and trolls in captivity.

PETA’s hard-ass bizarro campaigns don’t help. Last year they tried to poison Emelio, an adolescent seatroll in the Seattle aquarium. Some well-meaning soul had brought Emelio to the aquarium as a baby when he was caught in a fishing net. He’d still been young enough to impress on humans and despite his mangled foot, he’d adapted well and was well-known throughout the state due to all the human interest stories when he was put on display. There’s a Facebook page devoted to snaps and videos: playing tag with one of the divers, making faces at kids on the other side of the glass, and, as a tiny piteous baby, clinging to one of the keepers as they hand-fed him. There’s an unauthorized twitterfeed. Emelio’s like a local celebrity.

When the activist tossed the poison in, someone caught the whole sequence on their iphone, every thrash and all his agony. You watched the video all the way through, because it didn’t happen to you so you could just suck it up and deal, you needed to know, even imagining it all too easily to be one of the babies, one of yours. Emelio survived, though many of the animals in the exhibit died, but the aquarium’s website lists that his gills are now nonfunctional and that he’s too anxious to go back on display. You don’t blame him. You think about what you’d have done if someone pulled that on one of the troll babies here, and you remind yourself that violence shouldn’t be the answer. You remain unconvinced. You wish that PETA would just stick to buying and releasing lobsters.

Karkat’s wild caught, which is part of the reason he keeps getting returned, but you wouldn’t know it to see him at the moment. Your brain unhelpfully supplies you with images of panthers and wolves at rest, regal but still wound with the potential for harm. It’s not his fault he wasn’t socialized early enough, well enough. The hunters that caught him desensitized him to toddlers, thank the little godlets, and he’s great with medium to large dogs, but he still identifies cats and squirrels firmly in prey territory, and you’re not sure how he’d be with small dogs if they moved fast enough to surprise him.

You can sympathize, because Bec is mostly husky and he goes after cats and squirrels with an instinctual killing bite and shake. Sherry’s neighbor is less forgiving and owns a shotgun. You have words for people that let their cats roam outside, endangering themselves, killing native birds, and creating more ferals. They are not nice words, but Grandpa didn’t raise you to be _nice_. The whole thing happened in Sherry’s yard. The cat was in his territory. How can anyone explain to him that he was in the wrong?

Sherry hands the lead to you and pets Karkat softly one last time before she leaves. Karkat frowns more deeply at the touch, he can be a prickly jerk if he’s not the one to initiate contact, but starts after her. “No, Karkat,” you tell him, not because you’re sure he understands (you’re not sure he _doesn’t_ understand) but because you want him to turn towards you and stop before he hits the end of the lead. He looks at you and frowns.

The door closes behind Sherry and his head whips to follow the sound. He sits back and looks at you and whines. He’s not afraid of you at least, you both know each other well enough, but this is a disruption of his routine, and this is not the first time he’s been returned here. You wonder how much he understands and if he’s already missing Sherry.

The two of you stay like that for a while, and you keep one hand loosely on the line, the other clicking your mouse through the clinic’s paperwork, typing one-handed as necessary. You work at the local veterinary clinic weekends and over the summers between school, and Dr. Nitram’s Veterinary covers everything from house pets to livestock to legal exotics, which is how it became a sort of default rehoming center for said exotics. There are ten more trolls in the back and only two are boarders. Tavros is terrible at saying no, especially when it means that a healthy animal would have to be put down.

Eventually, Karkat slinks close enough to rest his head against you. His ears are pinned, his tail limp, and the line of his spine seems to spell defeat. The clock clicks over to six pm with a soft set of chimes. He sighs, and of all the noises he makes, it’s the most human of them. Trolls are mammals in the sense that platypuses are, sort of on the fringes of the definition. They’re built somewhere between primates and some sort of quadruped, maybe feline, with semi-retractable claws and opposable thumbs somewhere between primate and panda. Their fingers and thumbs are less nimble than ours, and they can and do use tools, but they have to put a lot more effort into it. They can’t make most human vocalizations, but their expressions are very, very, similar. The jury’s still out on how intelligent they are, but you lean to the side of “have no business keeping them captive”.

Karkat leans into you and you hear a rusty purr start up, with an odd hiccup and shake in between. Some people would claim that means he’s content. You’re pretty sure he’s trying to comfort himself. You rest your hand lightly on his head and he doesn’t push you away, so you run your fingers through his hair and around his horns as he huddles into your leg and the stutter purr vibrates your chair and a few drops of water might or might not hit the floor. You wish you could take him home and keep him, but your apartment is small and you’re already on shaky ground with your landlady over Bec.

Eventually Karkat falls mostly silent, except for his congested breathing. Your butt is entirely numb in your chair and you should have fed the animals almost an hour ago. You hate to disturb him, but life is full of unfortunate necessities.

“Up, Karkat, time to feed the inmates.” You don’t know how much trolls understand, but it can’t hurt anything and it keeps you from going crazy. You lock up the front and let Karkat off the lead. He looks at you like he’s trying to figure out your angle, a hilariously skeptical head tilt. You flick one of his adorable little baby horns and he yelps and shoots you a dirty look, but he’s breathing has steadied out, so _go Jade_.

You start in the small animal side, doling out food and supplements and a few meds and washing and refilling water bottles and checking a few bandages. All the animals are in cages here, and Karkat’s not so savage as to try to break in on them, he just can’t resist the motion of small prey fleeing.

You went deer hunting with your Grandpa for years, and you know you _NEVER_ shoot without identifying your target first, but that still doesn’t change how the pit of your stomach and the reptilian brain both snap to attention when you see motion while hunting. Karkat’s one of the sweetest natured trolls you’ve ever met, and you’d like to shove Sherry’s neighbor’s shotgun where the sun don’t shine.

Karkat sits at your feet the entire time, following you every time you move. He’s going to break your heart. You already have a boyfriend and a hairy monster in your life, and they’re already jealous of one another, but they don’t know about your periodic affair with Karkat. Well, Bec’s nose knows, but Dave’s still oblivious.

You love you boyfriend for all that he is and how he cares for you, how he makes you be a better Jade because he believes you already are, but there’s some things you’re both better off not sharing. Dave’s probably somewhere on I-90 in South Dakota at this point and you are already planning to replace your current model of personal space heater with the furry older model that he ousted. If Dave doesn’t like finding dog hair in the bed, maybe he should find an occupation that doesn’t require a CDL and interstate travel.

You finish up with Mr. Pringles, who is wearing a Cone of Shame. Karkat cackles at him, the first time your little monster has shown any sign of humor since Sherry left. The tiny Pomeranian whines. Dogs know when you’re laughing at them. You talk softly to Mr. Pringles so he knows that you still think he’s smart and handsome and such-a-good-boy. His poufy little tail wags a bit and he licks your fingers and you just _love_ dogs.

You walk out to the field with the stack of scooped grain buckets and a hay bale over your shoulder. You drop the hay and flick the bale open with your pocket knife, tuck most of the messy wad of baling twine in your pocket, and redistribute the flakes far enough apart that no one can bully everyone else off. You hang the feed buckets on the snaps along the fence and walk back with Karkat shadowing your steps. You open all the gates along the way, walk into the barn, and close all but one door.

“Sit. Stay,” you command calmly with the hand motions, and he does.

The adorable frown is back, like he’s concentrating very hard to be very good. You open the first stall door and Belle trots out with a look at the two of you and canters off to get her dinner. Karkat is steady. You open the next six doors and the two quarter horse geldings and three of the four Shetland ponies bolt off. The last pony sets of at that hilarious superfast trot ponies do when they don’t want to canter but are trying to keep up with longer legs.

Karkat vibrates in place.

“Stay,” you remind him.

He looks at you.

“Such a good boy!” You ruffle his head and he ducks, but presses into your thigh. You’re pretty sure he’s trying to hide that he’s smiling. His tail flicks once, then stills.

You leave the stalls open, someone will have to muck before the horses come back in in the morning, but you have legitimate business elsewhere and someone else can do it. You chuck the baling twine in the locking trash can and walk back to the field with Karkat and close all the gates.

Now it’s time to feed the trolls.

You start out back by the saltwater pool, fenced in with chain-link walls that block off two smaller sections with the pool in between. Cronus has had the pool today, while Meenah’s been in a smaller side of the enclosure. Cronus slides out of the pool and walks into his side without resistance, even though he doesn’t even start eating until you switch out the gates to block him in, leave Meenah’s food in the pool enclosure and let her out of her confinement.

Meenah ignores the food, ignores you, and growls at Karkat. He growls back, all sixty pounds of him vibrating at her eighty. She turns her back on him, and slips into the pool, splashing loudly and swimming past Cronus’s side several times to taunt him. You know you can’t prove that’s what she’s doing, but it sure looks and sounds like it.

No one gets in the enclosure with either of the seatrolls without at least one other person for backup, and no one EVER goes in if both are in the same enclosure.

Both of them were supposedly wild caught, they came in at the same time from a “collector”, and all the dogs, birds, rabbits, and iguanas went to another facility, but Tav was the only vet with an unoccupied saltwater pool. They both had ear mites and fleas, and were underweight but not starved. Meenah was heavily pregnant. Meenah’s beautiful, but unpredictable and dangerous, cunning enough to fake docility, but utterly wild. Tav and you both think that Cronus must have been caught at a much younger age. He’s more easygoing, and a complete pushover if you pet and praise him, even if he has a bad reputation after what happened when the babies hatched.

It seemed like everyone in the wider network of friends and family of volunteers and staff came to see the seatrolls after they first came in, most of you never having seen a seatroll up close before. There’s generally one or two at larger aquariums, but they’re about as common as jaguars as pets, and possibly a similarly bad idea.

Meenah’s name came after Dave dubbed her “Meaner-Janine-er-Diva-Ballerina” after watching her swim and terrorize Cronus while heavily encumbered. It got shortened to fit the tag on her collar.

Cronus’s name came from what he did when the babies hatched. Before that he was just Big Violet and you weren’t the only one who fussed over him with his beautiful big eyes and needy purrs and told him he was smart and handsome and such-a-good-boy. Before the babies hatched, Big Violet seemed like a good training prospect for underwater projects like selective fishing or conservation, more heavily motivated by praise than food. After, only a few of you still come to visit him outside of necessary care. He’s never been aggressive to humans. And yet… the feelings linger.

Trolls generally hatch out in clutches of twins, that is, the babies hatch from separate eggs, but they’re usually even numbered and pretty clearly sets of twins. Meenah laid nine eggs, eight hatched, and there are only five wrigglers in the indoor troll enclosures, three mismatched and one pair. Cronus took care of part of that difference.

There was a lot of hand-wringing and morality-tale-telling and we-should-haves from the volunteers and part-time staff, but if anyone had bothered to ask you, you’re not sure you could blame him.

The outdoor enclosure is wrapped in chain-link fence and when babies hatch they’re pretty small. Small enough to fit through the holes in a chain-link fence, which is what the security cameras caught Cronus attempting to do, before he killed the rest of the clutch.

Not that anyone else but Tav bothered, but after the hullabaloo of fending off the two adults and rescuing the last five babies, you rolled the security system files back and watched from the beginning.

There’s the clutch wobbling and starting to hatch. There’s Cronus watching it. There’s the first few babies emerging, wobbly, but already staggering over to the nearest adult figure, Cronus. There’s Cronus, picking off shell fragments, licking them clean. (There’s Meenah in the far end of the pool, back emphatically turned to ignore the proceedings.) There’s Cronus, pushing babies through the fence. There’s the babies, already so advanced in their motor development, that they’re emphatically galumphing back. He repeats the process until you lose track of which ones he’s pushed through how many times.

There’s Meenah, swimming closer until she snatches one without fins that’s gotten behind him. She drops it in the pool, where it thrashes, clearly panicked. Cronus starts to move, and she pushes it further in with a foot, stretching hands toward the rest. You can’t see from the angle, but you wonder if she’s threat smiling.

Cronus flares his fins. Meenah flares hers and lowers her head to aim her horns at him. You know that this is almost the time you all arrived, but not quite. Meenah lunges and Cronus can’t move without exposing the babies, but he braces himself. The lunge is a feint and Meenah slips back into the pool to poke at the now limp baby troll, tosses it out to land at Cronus’s feet.

The security cameras aren’t wired for sound, but the shapes of her body and face and mouth matched the cackling trolls make that you’d call laughter. Cronus licked the limp baby several times, but it didn’t stir. Then he lifted it by its nape and snapped his head sideways, the whiplash snapping the tiny form. He dropped the little form and nudged it once and turned to the rest.

You remember what he did to the next two, everyone knows at least part of it, even if only the horrified second and third-hand accounts, but you don’t think it meant what most of them thought. It was deliberate, and almost slow, and it would be unprofessional to say that he seemed sad to do it, and you are not _yet_ a crazy troll lady.

But he didn’t eat the bodies, there weren’t even any marks, which is itself remarkable considering seatroll teeth. None of the three were maimed, just, completely, unmistakably dead. None of the babies he hadn’t gotten to yet were injured. He didn’t resist when you had all charged in and drove him off. He didn’t go after Meenah. You think he even might be relieved that they’re not sharing the enclosure anymore. You would be if you had a roommate like Meenah. He’s been quiet since, doesn’t eat much, doesn’t resist anything, and if you _were_ a crazy troll lady, you’d call him depressed.

You remember a story Grandpa told you about a mother fox and her kit. The story starts with a farmer who has been losing chickens to a fox family. He hunts down the fox den, but only catches one of the parents with the kits. He kills the father and all but one of the litter. Then he chains the last kit to the barn and waits.

The mother fox comes every night. First she tries to carry away her kit. Then she covers the chain with dirt so that it’s concealed and tries to carry her kit away again, but, of course, it doesn’t work, object permanence doesn’t change just because you don’t understand it. Every night she brings her kit food, rodents, birds, even more chickens. Until at last, nights later, she brings her last kit the poisoned bait that the farmer has been leaving out. She’s never touched the bait before, she knows it’s to be avoided. But now she brings it to her kit, stays with it until it stops moving, and does not return again.

We know that animals want to survive, but we don’t know how much they understand about death.

We know they mourn, but we don’t know what they think, how they conceptualize themselves and their companions.

Can a troll commit a crime? Is a troll self-aware enough to commit suicide? Can a troll understand a mercy-killing?

Troll clutches are rare in captivity, and seatroll clutches are almost unknown. It keeps demand high for wild caught babies and for the few breeders that can reliably produce. It also makes it hard to establish what is _normal_ , because wild trolls would have territories and social structures and social interactions and the stress and purpose of survival, and the closest thing captive trolls have are usually enrichment activities and toys. It’s really not a substitute.

Plenty of zoo animals have mental issues due to captivity, everything from depression and anxiety to unpredictable lashing out and all too predictable repetitive behaviors. It’s not actually surprising if you were to call captivity a lifelong jail sentence for a wild animal.

Pets can have mental health issues too, but cats and dogs were bred to interact with humans, are domesticated. Most of the time, undesirable behaviors can be modified, but you don’t expect a panther to curl up in your lap, or play with your toddler, or go for walks on a leash, at least not without eventual consequences.

A troll might be almost as domesticated as a dog or as wild as an adult chimp. The difference seems to be how they are raised in the first few weeks and months of life. Trolls imprint, not as quickly and immutably as birds, but rather over the first few weeks, determining who are their parental figures and what gets categorized as family or predators or prey. Calmly raised trolls will be more confident and less violent. That at least is not entirely unlike human children.

Troll imprinting may have become their doom because it makes them susceptible to human influence, even if wild caught, so long as they are young, and it keeps the demand high, unfortunately inflated by people who have no idea what they’re doing.

Of the clutch survivors, now wrigglers, three are land trolls, a teal and twin blues. Every last one of the volunteers and staff love playing with all the wrigglers and you know it will be easy to find them homes, especially as there is already enough interest to be choosy about who gets them. If they have the temperament, with time they might actually make good service animals, not that there’s ever officially been one registered as such, whatever anecdotal historical evidence there might be. Dogs have long been the go to animal of choice, but miniature horses and monkeys are not rare, and trolls have the advantage of relatively nimble fingers and a long lifespan. There’s a lot of potential.

The two surviving seatrolls, a violet and a fuchsia, look like tiny replicas of the adults out back, except that the fuchsia is mellow like Cronus usually is, and the violet clearly inherited Meenah’s temperament. You do a lot of socializing with Eridan, and possibly some praying to a higher power.

You head indoors and Karkat faithfully follows, clearly having determined that you are hopelessly inept and in need of protection. You think that growling at Meenah has helped, because he’s moving a lot more boldly than when Sherry dropped him off.

You heat up the next batch of food, test that it’s not too hot, and start with the wrigglers, who’ve already been waiting more than long enough.

The blues, Peasee and Poridd, are easy natured, and the teal, Brindy, is a wicked little tease but ultimately sweet as long as you don’t get between him and his food. The blues bounce over to the side closest to Karkat and chitter a play call until they get distracted by the food. Brindy tosses his little baby horns at Karkat, already longer than Karkat’s while Brindy himself is a quarter of his weight. Karkat snorts and you’d have to classify it as dismissive.

Feferi and Eridan are next, splashing out of their little kiddie wading pool to greet you (Feferi) and shake you down for the goods (Eridan). You kneel to cuddle Feferi back and Eridan ignores the bowl he’s been demanding now that he has it and demands the same attention. The wrigglers are still so tiny you can scoop them up in one arm, leaving you the other free to fuss with their hair and tell them just how cute they are.

They cling to as much of you as they can reach and wind their hands and tails in your clothes. Feferi ties knots in your hair. It’s just like holding tiny toddlers. Finally Feferi leans way over and you put them down so you don’t drop them. Eridan looks miffed to have lost his warm place and Karkat cackles.

You extract yourself while Feferi starts in on her bowl and Eridan engages in a staring match with Karkat. Karkat strides exactly two steps closer and sits in front of Eridan, tail at a slow hunting twitch. Still separated by fencing, the two of them lean closer, very, very slowly until they are breathing the same air. They sit back and both turn away at the same time, Eridan to his food, and Karkat to you. You really wish you knew what trolls think, because you were expecting a bit more drama, and as nice as it is that that went better than expected, you’re not sure if that means they’re just saving mischief for a fencing-free confrontation.

Sometimes several of you come back here with some of the calmer animals to habituate the wrigglers to them. Peasee and Poridd both love chickens, especially pale breeds, and any visit from the next-door neighbor’s hens is followed by hours of vocalizations and scratching at the floor, which is how such visits got moved to the dirt floored pens outside, as they’re still so young the endless scraping can deform their claws. Poridd has been known to be tempted by Mrs. Martinez’s foul-mouthed parrot as well, though Peasee remained unmoved.

Brindy is head-over-heels for Bec but will accept any dog he can ride as an adequate substitute, the lighter and fluffier the better, and he’s not half bad at barking. Eridan is a total crazy cat lady and if you bring more than one cat back here, he’ll try to herd them all together to keep them for himself. You have not seen hilarious until you’ve seen a troll wriggler attempting to herd cats or turning his back to you to extend a leg in the air and lick it when you laugh. You’re pretty sure he did it just to show you how much he was snubbing you for laughing at him, but when you apologized, he did come back for more attention, as if all was forgiven.

Feferi is particularly fond of the neighbor’s alpacas. It was like a light bulb went off and you could almost see her thinking “Giant Fluffy Ambulatory Pillow + Friendly Animal Friend, Possibly Mom = Yes! Yes! All the yeses!”. The neighbor gave her a tiny t-shirt her daughter outgrew. It says, “Is Your Mama a Llama? Mine Is!” You don’t usually dress the trolls in clothing but she _does_ look super cute in it.

All of them reacted to the piebald Shetland pony the same way, initially unsure as to what to do with the huge creature, hundreds of pounds, in two very distinct colors, but not a dog or alpaca. Feferi had made the connection first and toddled over and lifted her arms. The pony, Fergus, dropped his head to sniff her and she latched onto his halter and forelock. Fergus paused when he lifted his head with eleven pounds of troll attached, but ponies are tough and generally see a lot of crazy human child antics.

Fergus is nineteen and currently in the process of raising his fifth human child to the point that they learn to ride or learn to fall, and he is what is known in the business as “bombproof”. Feferi crawled down his neck and settled in on his withers with a good grip on his mane and Fergus wandered over to the water bucket for a drink and then all the wrigglers wanted up. Cutest photo opp ever. The clinic’s website registered so many hits that month Tav had to upgrade his service. Laura started a baby troll blog. There’s a picture of Eridan somewhere on icanhascheezburger in a classic “cat” pose, seated with his tail primly circling his feet and an expression of disgust at the bowl of troll chow. It’s labeled, “Waiter, I clearly ordered the filet mignon.” This is especially hilarious to you because the troll chow is made on site of meat or fish, vegetables, and vitamin and mineral supplements, and the trolls eat better than you do.

The whole thing has been a good promotional lure to the actual education materials on the site, the ones that detail exactly how complicated raising trolls is, all the things no one actually knows, including their lives and populations in the wild, and how trolls can live thirty to fifty years and that anyone contemplating adopting one needs to be ready for that commitment. You can only be so stern about poaching and smuggling because you need people to want to be part of the solution and not feel lectured. Laura does a phenomenal job combining cute and practical. You would have said something _not nice_ the first time someone replied with something super stupid, but Laura is really good at polite and firm and all the internet trolls eventually just look silly.

Not much is known about seadwelling trolls and it may be too late for the babies to learn what they need to in order to survive outside, or they might not be developing properly without deeper water. You just don’t know.

Ideally, you’d like to see all four of the seadwellers reintroduced to the wild, because seatrolls are fabulous at discerning and decimating rogue organisms in ocean ecology, but once trolls get used to humans, they’re clever enough to be dangerous if left to their own devices. You can certainly imagine Meenah as an old fashioned siren of a mermaid tangling fishing nets and drowning swimmers.

Still, you wish that Feferi and Eridan could at least get access to the big pool out back more than once a week. You don’t know if they can be adopted out because not many people would have a proper habitat, but they can’t stay here long term, a 10 x 10 foot enclosure is just too small, no matter how often they get let out. One visitor on an open house day waxed rhapsodic about how he was going to install them in his Jacuzzi . Um. No. _Hell No._ People are nuts.

The troll in the corner pen doesn’t move from his padded bed as you unlock the food flap and slide his bowl in with a clean refilled water bowl. You pull the old bowl out, talking the entire time. Gamzee is blind in one eye and has had a rough enough time of it that even Tav turns a little misty eyed when he surveys the damage.

Gamzee is solidly imprinted on humans, but he’s also been in troll fights, and he’s traumatized enough he can’t always tell who’s what, or what’s who, especially if someone surprises him from his blind side or if he dozes off and wakes abruptly. There’s really no way he can be adopted, he’s just not safe. What he needs is a sanctuary with a troll-proof fence, and, as far as you know, there aren’t any.

You lock the food flap back up and give Karkat a nudge with your knee. He whines but moves, looking over his shoulder at the still form in the pen. Gamzee’s been here a few months now, walked two times a day with two of you to chaperone him. Karkat hasn’t been back except to the vet side for over a year, so he wouldn’t have seen him before. Or smelled him. Or whatever trolls do make each other’s acquaintance.

You’re going to finish doling out food with Sollux and Mituna, the only boarders, physically an almost matched set, personality-wise, not so much. Sollux and Mituna are your brother John’s trolls and they are, thank the little gods, toilet trained, which is why they’re sharing the one pen that has the extra plumbing.

We can’t all be famous movie stars on holiday (honeymoon) with our two sorta spouses. You say sorta because when you’re a famous movie star and have a lot of money from said fame, it’s easier to do what you need to do to live in a state that legalized gay marriage, but that doesn’t mean bigamy is legal yet.

John and Bro and Roxy are touring western to middle Europe and possibly teasing paparazzi with did-(s)he-or-didn’t-(s)he?, but you can’t get trolls through customs without a long quarantine period, so your golden honey boys are staying at Chez Tav as of earlier this week. They’re both easy keepers so long as you know what you’re doing, and you do. Mituna likes head scritches and laps and Sollux prefers to be the one to do the approaching, but is seriously _easy_ if you are effusive with the praise. Trolls are such cats.

Dave is still paused in an exceedingly long freeze-frame moment of confusion/horror over the fact that his vanilla “NOT-A-HOMO-REALLY-NOT-IN-A-BAD-WAY-JEEZE-I’M-JUST-MAKING-THIS-WORSE-AREN’T-I” bestie John is in a ménage à trois relationship with a man and a woman, and oh-by-the-way, the dude’s his Bro.

Poor Dave. Your cool kid is not as much a cucumber as he proclaims. He’s more of a kappa roll. Delicious. Mmm.

You’re really late and the troll chow, this week a mix of cooked, frozen, and now reheated hamburger, carrots, peas, green beans, and squash, is starting to look good. Actually it smells better than anything the combined talents of the Egbert-Strider-Lalonde household is likely to produce without a telephone and takeout menu, _and_ it’s healthier than a TV dinner. You dish up a fourth portion and heat it with the rest.

Karkat’s met your brother’s trolls before and they all get along, so you open the door wide enough that they can come out if they want, but not so wide that they can’t protest if they don’t want Karkat coming in.

Mituna springs at you while your hands are still occupied with dinner and scales you like a tree. It’s a good thing you’re a muscled amazon of an overachieving engineering and physics double major, because he weighs about 65 pounds, at least fifteen more than Sollux. He doesn’t grab for a plate, but he wraps his arms behind your neck and stares you in the eyes, lower lip protruding in a clearly epic attempt at Sad!Face-You-Forgot-Me-Where’s-My-Dinner? You purse your lips and blow air in his face. His nose wrinkles and he cackle-laughs, tail thumping against your leg, and he rubs his cheek against yours once and scrambles down.

You pass everyone a portion and dig into yours with the spork attachment on your pocket knife. Not bad at all. Clearly you are wasting your time shopping for dinner on nights that Dave-the-Kitchen-Slave isn’t around to cook. Karkat is clearly fascinated. He’s seen you eat before, so that can’t be it. Still, you’re not giving him your pocket knife, that has Loads-Of-No written all over it.

Mituna has finished his portion except for the green beans and is trading them to Sollux for peas, which he then flicks with a quick hand motion into an arch that flies through the empty pen and lands in Gamzee’s hair. Gamzee doesn’t appear to notice, but the wrigglers are done eating and clearly find this funny. A riot of cackling breaks out every time a pea lands in his hair and you could swear that the buzz that happens when Mituna misses entirely sounds like a Bronx cheer. A little whoop rings out when a pea traverses the space between Gamzee’s tall raised horns. You wonder if trolls are capable of enjoying football. They are a great deal more civilized as spectators than many fans.

Mituna runs out of peas and makes a snag for one of Sollux’s carrots. Clearly that was a line, because Sollux pounces and the two of them scuffle until Karkat finishes his portion and snags Sollux’s with a triumphant cackle, clearly for the benefit of both of them, as he carefully scoops out a chunk of carrot and v-e-r-y slowly pops it in his mouth. The twins look at each other and then pounce on Karkat.

You are now wearing Sollux’s dinner, which explains in part why he’s so much thinner than Mituna. At least there isn’t any gravy on the troll chow. You pull your phone out and take a few shots and send one with the rolling pile of trolls to John. You make sure it’s one of the ones where Sollux is smiling, something John classifies as mythical like unicorn farts. _Smell it, John, your disbelief won’t protect you._

You take it as proof of troll intelligence that Sollux regularly pulls one over on your brother, who utterly insists that nothing happened. Then again, John can be spectacularly hardheaded.

“We’re not missing you, not at all. Buttface.” You hit send.

You send a shot to Dave, a close up of Karkat’s concentration expression as he managed to pin Sollux.

“Aww, can we keep him?” You don’t expect a reply anytime soon, and if you get one, Dave better confirm he texted from a truck stop and not the cab, or you will have WORDS.

You send two shots to Roxy, the mess on your shirt and a particularly acrobatic whirl with which Karkat managed to roll the pouncing Mituna over his head in a tumbler’s wheel, half a second later landing back on top. It’s too bad you’re wearing a tee-shirt or you would totally send her something with more cleavage.

“Dinner and a show here with my boys. How’s the date going?”

You don’t want to leave Bro out so you send him the mess photo with one where Sollux managed to pin Karkat to Mituna.

“Sloppy joe sandwiches tonight at Chez Tavros. You eating all the cheval you can shake a crop at?”

Mituna is grooming dinner out of Sollux’s hair now, sitting on his twin’s back. Sollux keeps trying to get up but gives up when Karkat sits on his feet and starts in on Mituna’s hair. _They are so cute_. The wigglers across the aisle are all staring at the trio. Well, everyone but Eridan. Eridan is grooming Feferi’s hair while sneaking glances in and pretending not to. You’d love a pic but know it won’t work so well with the chain-link fencing between. You’re just enjoying the mostly quiet when your phone dings three times in succession.

From your ever mature brother, you get back a shot of Roxy’s boobs and a “Don’t care. Have boobs in my face. La la la. Can’t hear you.”

Roxy sends back a “rocketing and a roloing with my bois. All accordian to my nay-farrierous planz.”

Bro sends back a “sandwiches on the menu all around. and gramps should have gotten you a pony, you sick sad girl.”

You type back a quick set of “Jeeze, John, then why are you answering during sexy times?!!!”, “Ex-sex-ellent! Be sure to stroke a long haired pussy while plotting. Or better yet, have your minions do it.”, and “is that a promise old dude?”. You think for a moment and type another text to Bro, “FYI, be sure to remove the frilly cocktail pick from John’s ass before proceeding with sexy sandwich times.”

Then, because you love to torture John, but are otherwise _mostly_ a nice person, you put the parental locks on your phone, cue up a game of Bejeweled and slide it over to the still pinned smaller twin.

You get a truly sweet smile from the usually sour Sollux and you watch him immediately get enthralled. It’s things like this that make you question troll intelligence and personhood. A cat will paw at movement on a screen, but it can’t beat your score at Tetris.

John still doesn’t believe you when you tell him you’re not the one resetting the high scores on all his game systems. True, you have a key to their sweet pad. True you love to mess with him. True, you do occasionally crash at their place just to use their awesome gaming set up and get Bec’s fur all over the purple velvet pimp couch. But you only start the new games for Sollux so he can see how they work. It’s too bad he can’t read, but still John thinks it’s you, again, when all the high scores show some variant of “asdfjl”.

You also visit to be sure that the five of them are eating more than frozen pizza and beer, both significant and formidable human developments that should not be the mainstay of any troll’s diet. Dave and John take the twins out to the skate park and Roxy takes them to amateur roller derby night and successfully argued into letting them participate, though Sollux sometimes just sits out and jeers for the other team. They have specialized helmets just to fit their horns. They are _all_ such bro-dudes. Mituna is a complete and utter menace because his center of gravity is so low, and his legs are powerful enough for surprisingly sudden acceleration and turns. But he’s also super careful and he spends a lot less time in the penalty box than, say, _Roxy_ , and you love to watch the games even more than play them because you love to watch him strategizing.

The wrigglers cheep at you and you know it’s time to let them out. You know the twins are fine with them, but you don’t know if Karkat will be calm with the entire swarm. You slide out of the cell, with a pat to Karkat’s head as he turns, and you latch the door behind you. He tries to follow and just looks heartbroken when he can’t. It’s a very poignant frown. You are so in love. _Dave, we are simply going to have to live in sin with our gorgeous interspecies monkey dog child._

You let the wrigglers out, all five of them, and Brindy immediately attacks Eridan when he thinks you’re not looking. Eridan snarls as they tumble and clearly trounces his brother, who starts to whine and water at you piteously. Yeah, Brindy is not _quite_ as smooth as he thinks he is, because you’re not falling for that. One of the blues, Poridd you think, squats as if to make a deposit and you scoop him up and plop him in the litter box.

They are adorable, but you look forward to the day when they are old enough to use a toilet and smart enough to flush after. You keep up a running monologue as you survey your troop of wrigglers. Feferi is in front of the bars chattering at Sollux, who is pretending to ignore her. Pretending, because his body language is clearly “hmm, did you say something? I didn’t notice”, but his ears are pricked. Mituna has rolled off of Sollux to the edge of the pen and has his mouth open, lips and tongue curled with the slow breaths of flehmening. His eyeteeth are half the length of your pinkies and you know how some people can be afraid of trolls but he’s just so sweet that you just wish they’d pay attention to the who instead of the what.

Karkat whines at you and presses against the bars, reaching through to the closest wriggler, one of the blues, who bats at him and rolls over. Karkat bats back, lightly, even when the blue, Peasee, you’re pretty sure, sinks his needle sharp teeth in and Karkat growls softly and awkwardly but gently taps him with his other hand. You’re pretty sure that he’ll be fine with the wrigglers, so you open the door back up and get ready to snatch his harness if he proves otherwise.

All five wrigglers tumble into the room like a rising tide of cute armed with sharp teeth. They swarm Sollux, who sits up and manages to look highly offended, tail puffed and arrow straight. He pushes the three most active wrigglers, Brindy and both blues, at Mituna and the four of them play wrestle, Mituna on his back, the wrigglers squealing and triumphant in their rigged win.

Eridan gets shoved at Karkat, who holds him down and grooms him with tongue, teeth, and hands, over loud protests, until the protests die down to soft cheeps and finally a purr. You wish you could get a few minutes of video showing the conversion, complete with the poisonous look Eridan shoots you when he catches you looking. Feferi has clearly won a convert as Sollux puts up with her little pounces and wrestles her back with gentle little pushes, phone temporarily forgotten.

You look up for a moment and realize that Gamzee is looking back, though he quickly looks away again, glances back from the corner of lowered eyes. It must be lonely being the only troll not included. You can’t let him out, but you unlock the pen next to his and prop open the door with a cushion, then pull a few more pillows and blankets from the supply closet, dump them in a pile in the newly opened pen.

The initial furor has died down and you give a little whistle to get their attention. Heads turn and you point at the blankets. You don’t have to do anything else. Trolls love new pillows and blankets with the covetousness of a conquistador over terra incognita.

Poridd climbs the fence to try to get there first, only to end up on the ceiling fencing, looking astonished, as if he’s not sure how he ended up upside down. Clearly, he has a way to go before he achieves Sollux’s grasp of spatial reasoning. You disentangle him, one clawed extremity at a time, and he clings, having clearly scared himself.

Mituna has already charged in with Peasee and Brindy still attached and pounces on the top of the pile. Sollux sulks in with Feferi on his back, phone pressed to his chest with one hand.

Karkat backs in, carrying Eridan tucked under one arm like a socialite with a purse Chihuahua, and dragging the largest pillow from the first pen in his teeth. It’s actually the twins’ bed and Mituna looks briefly torn over if he should surrender his kingship of the hill to go after hearth and home. Karkat settles the giant pillow at the edge of the pen closest to Gamzee, and resumes grooming Eridan, alternating a few tongue strokes with a sort of mumbled commentary and significant looks at Gamzee.

You should probably go home to sleep, but Dave is out of town for another few days and Bec is awesome, but not up the same standards of conversation or entertainment as your boyfriend or a herd of trolls (a crash of trolls? A gaggle? A gang? A prickle? A pounce? Will Eridan someday be an ostentation of trolls all by himself?). So instead you pry yourself up and call your next door neighbor Nettie from the clinic’s phone. It’s almost nine, but she’s a night owl anyway, and you’re both each other’s back up in case of pet related emergencies. This isn’t precisely an emergency but you give each other a lot of leeway. Also, the wrigglers are super cute and that will cut you _a lot_ of slack.

“Allo?” It’s Nettie’s voice but just slightly less chipper than usual, which you hope is only because the number is the clinic and no one wants to find out that something’s happened to their pet. You charge ahead before she can start counting all her cats to see if any are missing.

“Hi, Nettie, this is Jade, no emergency, but how much cute do you think you can handle?”

“That’s a silly question. All of it!! What’s up?” She sounds a little relieved and a lot happier.

“I’m still at the clinic, Sherry had to surrender Karkat. Could you let Bec out again, then feed and bring him? Sollux and Mituna are here for the rest of the week and they all seem to get along with the wrigglers so I figured, Dave’s out of town, why not a sleepover? You up for it?”

“Of course, how could I not? Should I bring anything?”

“Eat first unless you want hamburger helper troll chow. There’s blankets and pillows here as long as you don’t mind that you might have to share. I’d tell you to bring your own, but fair warning, you’d still probably be sharing.”

“Sure!” And Nettie hangs up.

Nettie’s one of your best friends since kindergarten but she’s as terrible about phone manners as you are. Her legal name is Nepeta F. LaJeune but she learned early on to jump in and derail conversations so the two of you were in sixth grade before you found out what Nettie was short for. Most of you had assumed it was Nettle, because it seemed to fit with the rest her siblings, Lily, Leo, Rosa, and Equius, flowers for the girls and animals for the boys.

Of course, it turned out Lily’s name was really Muguet Lyn, long since Meulin to friends, Leo was short for Leontodon, Rosa’s middle name was Pimpinellifolia, and Equius was short for Equisetum, or, as the rest of them liked to tease him, Horsebutt. Equius is engaged and a grad student in the program you’re in, and he’s always super polite and reasonable, which is not at all how you remember him in grade school. You feel kind of bad for years of laughing behind his back about how stuffy and easily riled he was, but you’re glad he seems so much happier now.

You like Nettie’s parents, her dad’s the most friendly and caring person you know, and her mother is super involved and the best cook you know, but you are **_so_** relieved that Grandpa was a practical soul that believed in being over prepared and not in naming children after “signs”. It’s fun to have your fortune told with tarot, but you don’t really want to go through life as Dr. Mistletoe P. Harley or something.

Nettie shows up with Bec on his lead and a positive heap of quilts. This causes mass furor and debate among the trolls over who gets what, and it’s a good thing that she loves animals like you do because they pretty much mug her.

Eventually, everyone settles back down, Mituna’s pile two quilts higher, Eridan having won the purple quilt by sheer lung power, and Karkat having confiscated the fluffiest quilt, unfolded it, rolled on it, and passed it by the narrowest margins along the concrete and under the fencing to Gamzee, who wraps himself in it and huddles back against the fence. They are going to break your heart. Karkat is still softly muttering to Gamzee, one hand pressed through the fence into his hair, combing out peas and trying to untangle knots.

Eridan is wrapped in his newest conquest, like he’s trying to keep even the very edges to himself, and he trips and teeters as he makes his way back to Karkat. Then he sits down under his chin and head butts him, clearly frustrated that all the attention is not where it rightfully belongs. Usually he’s all over Nettie because she smells like cats, but evidently Karkat trumps that. You don’t think they understand puns, but who are you to know?

Sollux has stayed out of the furor and Feferi is sitting with him, looking up, as if to say, “Okay, now what?” Sollux is a bit of a grump but he’s also the smartest troll you know, and this could be super useful as well as instructive if Feferi actually learns from him without outside “training”. You’ve tried teaching him symbolic language, since trolls can’t make most human sounds or shape most human sign language, but he never stays interested for long and John gives him pretty much everything he wants so you don’t have any leverage to negotiate. Sollux puts the phone down and starts poking the screen again, but this time, you notice, he’s doing so where she can see what he’s doing. You mentally cross your fingers.

Peasee is taking full advantage of Nettie’s undivided attention, shamelessly cooing and purring responses back to her as she gives him the necessary so-smart-and-handsome-and-such-a-good-boy.

Brindy has parked his butt on Bec like Bec is the ultimate pillow. The 10’ x 10’ enclosure is a ridiculously tight fit for three adult trolls, two adult humans, a large dog and five juvenile trolls, but that just makes it cozy, blankets and cushions covering almost the entire floor.

It doesn’t take long for everyone to quiet down. You check the locks and refill a waterbowl for the corner, dim the lights to their lowest level, then move back into the huddle of warm bodies and hope someone is willing to share a pillow.

You wake up the next morning back-to-back with Karkat under a pile of blankets and baby trolls, Eridan aggressively tucked under your chin, both horn points tucked against your neck. No wonder you had been dreaming about being in sixth grade and sneaking your retainer out at night. Urgh. You squish his little baby cheeks lightly into a duck face while he’s unable to object. So cute!

Nettie is still asleep under a mound of blankets, flanked by Mituna, half sprawled on her, and a more restrained Sollux. Sollux is already awake and poking at your phone. Feferi is cuddled into him and watching. Behind Nettie, Bec is snoozing on his back, all four legs dangling midair, just his paws and snout showing over and around the pile. He looks ridiculous.

The weight on your back turns out to be a combination of blankets, Brindy, Peasee, and Poridd, and more pillows.

You reflexively reach for your phone to document this adorable, but, duh, it’s not there. You wonder how long your battery is going to last, and if you can convince Sollux that taking pictures is worth his while. You wonder how much it would cost to get a family plan and add him. Better yet, you’re going to have John get a family plan and add you and Sollux. And maybe Dave. And Karkat. Damn. You’ve been awake all of thirty seconds and already trimmed sixty plus bucks from your monthly bills. It’s going to be a good day, you can feel it. You can also smell troll pee and the weights on your ribs and hips are shifting. Time to reinforce some litter training on the troll babies.

*

*

Some people go on vacation and buy a few souvenirs, send a few postcards, take pictures of themselves in front of famous things, and this sounds kind of boring to everyone who didn’t go, but it’s practical enough. Some people make an effort to go off the beaten track and maybe have a more liberal and more massive idea of souvenirs, like your Gramps, who ended up with a mansion full of trinkets from markets and commissions from artisans all over the world: African masks, a taxidermy hyena, a bright carved totem pole with Bec’s head on top, a carousel horse with golden mane, a chainsaw bear sculpture, woven baskets and beautiful kites, some of which you mangled trying to launch.

The Lalonde-Egbert-Strider household returns from their quasi-Honeymoon with an entire European circus.

**Author's Note:**

> The story about the fox family should be credited, and, alas, I can't find the book from whence it came... It was a 1950s/1960s plaid volume of wild animal stories for children from a man born in the 1800s who sounded more than a bit like Jake Harley/Grandpa...


End file.
